Mind Association

'Knowledge by Acquaintance' in Plato's TheaetetusAuthor(s): R. S. BluckSource: Mind, New Series, Vol. 72, No. 286 (Apr., 1963), pp. 259-263Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the Mind AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2251697 .

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'KNOWLEDGE BY ACQUAINTANCE' IN PLATO'S THEAETETUS

SOME scholars have maintained that the purpose of the Theaetetus is not, as Cornford held, simply to show that knowledge (&7rca-r'p-) cannot be explained if we leave the Forms out of account, but-rather to show that knowledge cannot be a matter of ' acquaintance ' of any kind, being necessarily propositional. My purpose is to rebut this contention.

Professor Ryle pointed to the argument that knowledge involves judgement. 'This means', he says (MIND, xlviii (1939), 317), ' to bring together threads from earlier and later parts of the dialogue, that knowledge requires for its expression not just a name but a sentence or statement '. The inquiry into the nature of false belief shows that a 'simple' could never be the object of a mistake: 'I could mistakenly think that 7+5=11. . . . But 7 could not be the total object of a mistake, and so, by implication, not the total object of a piece of true belief or knowledge eitber' (p. 318). 'What I know or truly believe or falsely believe is some sort of a complex of elements, and one the verbal statement of which requires . . . a complex expression of which the special form of unity is that of a sentence. What constitutes a complex, like a syllable, a unity is some feature of it other than any one or the mere lot of its elements, such as letters. That is, Plato is now considering the places and roles of " terms " in truths and falsehoods, with his eye on the under- lying question of what are the principles of organisation which govern the combination of such " terms "' (p. 320).

Now the Greek wordco'ea is not necessarily to be associated with pro- positions. It may refer simply to what a thing 'seems like'. In the Meno 8o0'a about a thing may be converted into E7r?tjqJ of it, and in the Republic one may be led on (or upwards) from ao'a to E7rt0nT - and in the Republic, at least, Ec7rLa-r is certainly a matter of ' know- ledge by acquaintance' with Forms. There is no reason to suppose that at the time of the Republic Plato associated &o'ea any more than E7TLcaYTJp-q with propositions; and the indications are that even in the Theaets,tus he is not introducing 80'a as something essentially pro- positional. At 202b Socrates uses the expression 'to get hold of the true 8o0'a of something without a logos ', and at 190d and 209b he uses 8oea4Etv to mean 'to think of ' or 'to have in mind '. When Socrates shows that mere sense-perception cannot apprehend exis- tence and non-existence, likeness and unlikeness, and so on, he seems to be interested not so much in the fact that judgements such as ' X is F ' are propositional as in the question with what sort of faculty we apprehend the element. of F-ness. Theaetetus' conclusion, of which Socrates approves, is that existence and so on are things that must be surveyed (E'7naKOTEtv) by the soul (185e). The point seems to be that some things are objects not of any sense-organ but of 8o'ea; and it looks as though Uoea may be introduced not in order to indicate

259

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260 R. S. BLUCK:

that an object of knowledge must be something complex, but simply to show that knowledge involves not, or not only, sense-data, but mental apprehension.

So far there is no reason to suppose that Plato had ever goneinto the question whether a 3o'ea would be propositional or not. Sometimes he treats a 8'ea as though it were propositional, at others he seems to be thinking of it as a sort of mental image-a conception which, however difficult (especially in the case of things like existence), is at least no more difficult than that of knowledge by acquaintance with the Good. Had Plato intended, in introducing 8o0'a, to showthat what can be known is what can be truly opined and therefore stated, he would surely have been bound, in view of his treatment of o'ea in earlier dialogues (where it is not clearly propositional), to make his point more clearly here. Instead, he seems deliberately to remind us of his earlier views, and to give no hint that a special aspect of 8o0'a is being for the first time noticed, and a new conception of E'Muir implied. When it is found that true 8o0'a does not by itself constitute knowledge, this finding is accompanied by the juryman-and-eye- witness analogy. Knowledge is to true belief as is the state of mind of an eye-witness to the state of mind of a juryman who is won over by persuasion. We are inevitably reminded of the road-to-Larisa illustration in the Meno, where the man with personal experience of the road is said to have knowledge, while the man who has merely been given correct instructions has only true opinion. Both analogies suggest that some sort of personal acquaintance is the mark of know- ledge; and as applied to a priori knowledge, the Meno illustration certainly meant that knowledge involved yvcJocns or ra EKEl. It is natural to suppose that the Theaetetus analogy, as applied to such things as existence and likeness, ought to mean the same. Further- more, the Timacus tells us that if knowledge and true belief are different, then there are Forms, whereas if they are not different, sensible objects must constitute reality (51d). Even if the Timaeus preceded the Theaetetus, it would seem natural, in the absence of clear evidence to the contrary, to take the present distinction as implying that knowledge is of Forms.

Again, it is true that in the Theaetetus Socrates treats false 8o0'a as though it must be some kind of aoA8Aoea-taking one thing for another, thinking ' ugly ' instead of ' beautiful ' or 11 instead of 12. But that there is no sort of deliberate mistake here designed to imply that judgements and likewise knowledge are propositional is suggested by the fact that the same thing is done in the Sophist. There too the essence of falsity consists in getting hold of a wrong predicate-thing- 'stating what is different as though it were the same ' (263d). There the context shows, as I have argued elsewhere (JHS, lxxvii (1957), 183 ff.), that ' different ' and ' same ' refer to things denoted by the predicate only. In the Sophist, of course, Plato is at the same time treating judgements as propositional in character; but 263d shows that the mere treatmnent of false 80'a as dAWAo8oa is not a deliberate

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'KNOWLEDGE BY ACQUAINTANCE' 261

absurdity, from which we must be meant to infer the propositional character of 8o0'a. Indeed it seems that in the Theaetetus Plato is looking for the psychological rather than the logical explanation of false 8o0'a, and this is a question that is not resolved even in the Sophist. When in the Sophist Socrates considers propositions because he wants to show that false statements, whether expressed or silent, are logically possible, there is no hint that there is any special con- nec-tion between the nature of a statement and the nature of knowledge. It may be added that when in the Theaetetus (186e) Socrates refutes the suggestion that knowledge is perception by remarking that perception has no part in apprehending d'A40Eta because it has no part in apprehending being (oviota), this need not mean that E7Tur is knowledge of true propositions: for &A4EUta, besides meaning 'truth ', can also mean ' genuineness ' or ' what is genuine or real'.

Lastly, a propos of the idea that in the Theaetetus Plato is consider- ing the complex make-up of a sentence, it may be noted that the outcome of the discussion of complexes no more suggests that knowledge is in fact of complexes than that it is of simples; and it certainly leaves open the question whether or not a complex should be regarded as something different from the sum of its parts. The Sophist is indeed the sequel to the Theaetetus, but the two dialogues are not both concerned with the logic of propositions. The Theaetetus, I suggest, shows that whatever the psychological explanation of error may be, knowledge cannot be explained if the Forms are left out of account; and the Sophist supports this conclusion (as against the view attributed to Protagoras in the Theaetetus) by showing that it is logically possible to think or speak what is false.

It looks, then, as though 6rtur4r may be knowledge by acquain- tance with Forms, and that a thing like the number 7 can be an object of E-c7jtz. But Mr. Hamlyn finds evidence that the terms E7r4TW,nu and yvckrtsg are no longer equivalent and interchangeable, as they were in the Republic (cf. 477a, 510a, 517b), but are contrasted. For Hamlyn, the central problem of the Theaetetus, as of the Sophist, is how knowledge which is expressible in ordinary statements is possible: Plato is trying to ' vindicate ordinary knowledge ' (Phil. Q. v (1955), 300-302). While holding that Plato still believed in Forms of some kind, he sees a sharp contrast in the Theaetetus be- tween yvckrtg or recognition of a Form, and Er4c7zu that is express- ible in statements made about it. He appeals to the two passages where the enumeration of the parts of a thing is discussed (203a ff., 207a ff.), and argues that as the former uses yvckrtg and its derivatives without reference to Eu-rc7az , while the latter does the reverse, Plato must be making a distinction between two kinds of knowledge. If Plato still believed that E`Mon- W could come simply from direct acquaintance with Forms, Hamlyn argues, ' one would expect Socrates to conclude his refutation of the dream-theory by saying that elements are more E7r-rros- than complexes. But he does not; he says that they are more yvcocr-o's ' (MIND, lxvi (1957), 547).

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262 R. S. BLUCK:

Now at 201c-d, after Socrates has distinguished 'rruxn from &0xa a'ArqXr6 with the aid of the eye-witness analogy, Theaetetus says that he remembers someone saying that those things whereof one has true 80'a which is dAoyos arc OVK E)rLaT7-Tap - ova5-rt Kat ovoa'C&v- but those whereof one has true 8o0'a LLE-ra Ao'yov are Euiripr-r4a. The words ov6cOrL Kat ovoua'Cwv might conceivably mean that special significance was attached to th'e use of the word raa-r-rprca by the person from whom the theory was heard. But whatever the explana- tion of these words may be, if Socrates himself had been meant to point such a distinction as Hamlyn wishes to find he would hardly have been made to say, in the account of his dream (202c), that if you have a correct impression of a complex object without a Ao'yos of it you do not ytyVQc'TKElV the thing, but if you have the Ao'yoT as well you have got -'7rtjr-q,v of it ('of it' is clearly implied: with TEAELCOS TpoS E7 U1-O7pav EXELV compare the preceding avEtr-qi-uova Etvat7 rEpt i-ov'rov). The point here can hardly be that the Ao'yos. gives you EcTta-r7 JL? because it provides a proposition, for tiTa-r V

EXEtv seems clearly to be used simply as the opposite of ovi yCyvLOUKEtV.

It is true that Socrates is here expounding the dream-theory, which is not his own, but if he meant immediately afterwards to indicate an important distinction that was his own between yv6krts- of simples and u74TWqJp of propositions, it would be odd that he should here confuse the issue in this way. The matter becomes clearer still at 209e. If, argues Socrates, acquiring a Ao'yoS means getting to know (yvc6vat) a distinguishing mark, then it is absurd to define EaTIq14L7 as true 8o0'a plus this yvkot.. Why is it absurd? Precisely, surely, because yvCoors is simply another name for the definiendum, E irt0X-,.

As Socrates himself says, ro yap yvCZvat E7TL9UT7FLV 7r7 v Aa/3EZv EaUtv.

However one might try to explain away this passage, if one of Plato's objects in the dialogue was to indicate an important new distinction of his own, it is surely incredible that he should allow Socrates here to identify the terms concerned. In neither of the two passages to which Hamlyn points, 203a ff. and 207a if., does either of the terms occur very frequently, and no pointed distinction may be intended at all.

Hamlyn (loc. cit.) is no doubt right when he takes 207a if. to mean that ' E 7rto4p, does not consist of true belief with the possibility of enumerating the parts of a thing at all (whether we have yvduat. of the parts or not)', and that as applied to Forms it means that 'if Forms are simples, and if despite the dream theory we can have yvCoarsT of them, we do not haveJMUT 'rr,qmerely by truly believing something about some object and by being able to list the Forms in which that particular object participates' ; or perhaps we should say, we do not have E7r49jnqt of a Form such as Wagon by truly believing something about it and being able to list the parts of one of its instances. But there is nothing here to show that u7CTWjU17 is not still a kind of yvcnO9t. In Hamlyn's view (loc. cit.), 'the implication . . . is that we do not have E7rtg-r4 about a thing unless we also know the principles in

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'KNOWLEDGE BY ACQUAINTANCE' 263

virtue of which syllables (i.e. combinations of simples) are formed '. But what we are told is that the reason why the ability to enumerate the parts of a thing does not convert cpOp') 80o'a into knowledge is that you may be able to make a correct enumeration in one instance, but not in every instance of the same thing (207d-208a); aind what is needed to enable you to do that every time is not, surely, a general understanding of the principles in virtue of which complexes are formed, but an inner certainty resulting from personal familiarity with the particular 'syllable' (or Form whose instances have parts) concerned. Such an interpretation agrees with what the eye-witness analogy suggests about the relationship between true 8o0'a and E7&Tlrju; and the syllables-analogy may be taken to have precisely the same meaning, 'a propos of ' complex' Forms, as the letters- analogy has, 'a propos of' simple' Forms, at Rep. 402a-b.

It may be, as Cornford suggests (PTK, pp. 142, 146, n.1), that E7tur4STq would involve the acquisition of a different sort of Ao'yo& from any of those discussed in the Theaetetus-an explanation of a thing's raison d'etre. But this might follow upon the personal acquaintance that is clearly regarded as necessary-and that means, surely, yvckrtgs of the particular Form concerned.

University of Manchester R. S. BLUCK

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